I AM: The Good Shepherd

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 Wow. I don’t remember that lunch, but hopefully you don’t. I was, I don’t, I’m sorry man. Um, hopefully it was good though. It was a wonderful, okay, good. Praise God. Well, my name is Jay, as Trey mentioned, and man, I’m just, I’m really honored to be here. Can I just tell you, as someone who is about to plant a church, who is in the process of trying to find a location and, and trying to just navigate so many.

Intricate details, like it has been amazing to be here yesterday, seeing some of the setup team and the leadership, uh, just to hear, uh, from Trey about everything it took to get into this place. And one of the things I was processing as I was worshiping was, man, uh, like God doesn’t need this like, formal, traditional church building for his spirit to reside.

Like his spirit actually goes where people are hungry and wanted to go to. And I just felt that in here. As I’m talking about the Good Shepherd, and in this passage, this context, um, that I’m gonna give you, the, the Shepherd is often translated, um, to, to pastor. And it made me think about Trey and, you know, uh, I, I saw a lot of little kids running around and, uh, you know, my wife and I, we have four kids.

If you could start praying and fasting for us as well. Um, but. I find it interesting as a parent when you start getting together with like other parents who have kids, somehow that conversation starts to turn like towards your kids. Right? Sometimes if we’re honest, like it’s man, you know, little Johnny is is doing well, but like I can’t stand little Susie right now or so, you know what I mean?

It’s like there’s always something that you could say about your kids. Well, I’ve noticed stepping into the pastoral world, pastors are like that with their church and I find it so fascinating. I. Lord, like I pray that I can always be honest and have good things to say about our church, but the, I I just wanna share this with you.

Um, every time I talk to Trey, he has such good things to say about this community. There’s not like this, oh, well, you know, little Caleb over there just keeps tripping or something. Right? It’s, it’s, I love this community. And if I, if I’m being honest with you, um, when I answered the call to, to be a pastor in 2020, it wasn’t like, like at the top of Forbes Magazine list of professions to get into, right?

It was if you don’t say this thing right, like you’re wrong or if you don’t say this thing right, you’re wrong. There’s like, there was no in between on like how to be a really good pastor and have people actually enjoy who you are, um, and support you and pray for you, right? It’s this novel idea. To be honest, like one of the reasons why I stepped into pastoral ministry was watching Trey was watching the way that he cared so deeply about how people were formed.

Um, more than anything else. Yeah, it hasn’t been easy for him, but in our conversations, like knowing that he has not quit, I think is a big testimony of the call that God has on his life and the community of people that have surrounded him. So I just want to encourage you, like as I was like looking around and meeting a lot of you, I like you guys are giving me tangible people to be in to pray.

For our church people who will, like Ron in the back, who will set up things in mics and people that will fix lights without even asking, which I think is a good thing, right? But like, like I just pray that, that the, the, the centering of this church, the vision, y’all will carry that out and support like your leadership and be invested in your community.

Cuz I, you know, I was, uh, took an Uber over here and of course in, in striking fashion, my wife always makes fun of me cuz I always make conversation with like, And so I’m like, how’s your day going? And they’re like, of course. Like, what are you doing here? And I said, well, uh, I’m actually headed to church, right?

I’m like, okay, let’s see where this one goes. And I say, I’m headed to church. And she’s like, oh, well what’s your message on? I’m like, oh God. Is this, am I prepping for right here? Okay, well this, I got 10 minutes, so let’s see how fast I can get all of it in 10 minutes. But I just begin to share her about, uh, this good shepherd named Jesus.

And as I share all these qualifications, she stops and she pauses. Do you think that’s why there’s so many bad people in the world is cuz they don’t know about this good shepherd. This is what my Uber driver says and I’m like, absolutely right. And so this morning I pray that even as I talk about this, there, uh, there’s some stirring of gratitude that you can have for your pastor and their team.

But I pray this morning that, um, in a culture where people can’t seem to agree a lot of times on who Jesus. Or what he’s come to do or his characteristics. I love that. Jesus, I love the series that you’re going through because Jesus actually tells us who he is. Yeah. Like that’s the best thing, right? It’s like, no, no, no.

I I hear you. I hear you. But let’s see what Jesus actually says. Amen. And so that is the goal this morning. And so if you would just pray for me as, um, pray for me. Yes. But pray with me as we, um, step into our time this morning. Father, we thank. For the team of people, the provision that you placed here just to be in this cafeteria.

For we just pray for the school who is allowed them to be here, that they would see the blessing and benefit of having Passion Creek in this building. Would today’s message stir us up to be deeply formed by you? For the sake of others, we love you. Would you get glory in this place? Amen. John 10 verse 11 says, I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Now, I find it very interesting that Jesus calls himself the good shepherd in this list of statements, right? He didn’t say, oh, I am the good gate. I am the good light. I am the good bread. Like he didn’t say I’m sourdough bread. Like he didn’t say he didn’t give any, but in this moment what he does is he adds good to the term shepherd.

And as I was processing and praying through that, he’s speaking to a context of people who knew very much about what shepherding was in that day. And agent culture shepherding was more of a thing than we even see today. It’d be very weird if, well, probably not. In Queen Creek, I see a lot of hills. Sorry, that was my one California joke.

I’ll let it go. I didn’t even talk about the Lakers, so I’m gonna let that one slide. Great job.

But these people deeply understood the concept of a shepherd, but he says that I am the good shepherd because these people also deeply understand the concept of who a bad shepherd is. And I want to take you to what Jesus. How he defines what a bad shepherd is so that we can actually delight in him being the good one.

For context, uh, we’re gonna go to Ezekiel in a second, but Ezekiel lived among the Jews in Exile and Babylon, and, and they lived in exile due to their rebellion against God, and he’s pronouncing judgment on both Israel and the surrounding nation, but he’s also providing a vision of the future kingdom.

And so I just want, it’s, it’s, it’s quite a few verses, but I just want you to sit and, and see what stands out to you when we read about who Jesus says is a bad shepherd. Ezekiel 34 verse one. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, prophesy against the Shepherds of Israel, prophesy and say to them, this is what the Lord God says to the shepherds, whoa, to the shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves.

Shouldn’t the shepherds feed their flock? You eat the fat, wear the wool, and butcher the flat in animals, but you do not tend to the flock. You have not strengthened the weak. You have not healed the sick bandage, the injured brought back the strays, or sought the lost. Instead, you have ruled them with violence and cruelty.

They were scattered for lack of a shepherd. They became food for all of the wild animals when they were scattered, my flock went astray on the mountains in every high hill. The flock was scattered over the face of the earth and there was no one searching or seeking for them. Therefore, you shepherds hear the word of the Lord as I live.

This is a declaration of the Lord God, because my. Lack lacking. A shepherd has become prey and food for every wild animal. And because my shepherds do not search for my flock, and because the shepherds feed themselves rather than my flock, therefore you shepherds. Look, I, I don’t know if you can hear it in my tone or see it in the text.

Jesus is about to go in. He’s and God’s about to go in. Sorry. Go in means he is about to give a word. He’s very frustrated. He’s about to tell you the truth. So he’s about to go in and he’s therefore you shepherds hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord God says. Look, I am against the shepherds. I will demand my flock from them and prevent them from shepherding the flock.

The shepherds will no longer feed themselves for, I will rescue my flock from their mouths so they will not be food for them. For this is what the Lord God says. See, I myself will search for my flock and I will look for them. As a shepherd looks for his sheep on the day he is among his shattered, uh, scattered flock.

So I will look for my flock. I will rescue them from all the places where they have been scattered on the day of clouds and total darkness. I will bring them out from the the peoples, gather them from the countries and bring them to their own soil. I will shepherd them on the mountains of Israel in the ravines and in all the inhabited places of the land.

I will tend them to. To them in good pasture. And their grazing place will be on Israel’s lofty mountains. There they will lie down in good grazing place. They will feed, enrich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I will tend my flock and let them lie down. This is the declaration of the Lord God. I will seek the loss, bring back the strays, bandage, the injured, strengthen the weak, and I will destroy the fat and the strong, and I will shepherd them with justice.

I don’t even have to preach anymore. Honestly. This is gonna preach itself. Yeah. You see what Jesus is doing here is he is defining what a bad shepherd is, right? And not only is he doing that, he’s going to then reclaim what good shepherding looks like. And it doesn’t surprise me that the people were led to greater rebellion because there was bad shepherding taking place.

Like, I wonder how much rebellion would’ve actually continued to happen if there was good shepherding involved. So bad shepherding. Let’s see what it consists of. Selfishness. It says that the shepherds were too busy feeding themselves, neglecting. They did not tend to the sheep. They ruled with violence and cruelty.

They don’t strengthen the weak. They don’t care about healing the sick. They don’t bandage the injured and they don’t search for the strays or seek the lost. You see the shepherds were more concerned with the power and their status by centering themselves and their needs in the story. Where have we seen this in today’s society?

People that would rather feed the. People that are neglecting those in the margins. People that would rather, uh, keep their position of power and status rather than actually serving and laying it down. You see, Jesus came to rescue and restore all bad shepherding. Listen to what he says now in John verse 10, right after he says, I am the good shepherd.

He says the hired hand, since, since he is not the shepherd, doesn’t own the sheep, he leaves them and runs away. When he sees the wolf coming, the wolf snatches and scatters them. This happens because he is just a hired hand and doesn’t care about the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just how the father knows me, and I know the father.

I lay down my life for the. But I have other sheep that are not from this sheep pen. I must bring them also and they listen to my voice. Then there will be one flock, one shepherd. This is why the father loves me, because I lay down my life that I might take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own.

I have the right to lay it down and I have the right to take it up. I have received this command from my father. So I read you these two main texts to give you a picture of what a, a, a, a clear picture of what bad shepherding, bad leadership, being a bad follower looks like, and, and what a good shepherd looks like and what it produces.

You see, good shepherding from this con, from this passage in. John says that a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. It says it five. In these short verses, do you think he’s trying to get a point across right? He lays down his life for his sheep shepherds. One commentary says that shepherds may take risk for the safety of the sheep, but it is very rare to find one who would be willingly able to die for the sheep.

You see there’s this theme throughout scripture where Jesus, when he saw people, these sheep, when he saw the crowds, he was moved with what? Compassion. Right? But the hired hands, the bad shepherds, when they see the crowds, oh, they don’t see compassion. They just see compensation. Yeah. Right. They see, oh, I’m, I’m, I’m a hired hand.

I don’t really have to care about you. I just get my check and I bounce, oh, the wolf is coming. Nah, I didn’t sign up for that. I’m just gonna go ahead and leave you here. There’s a difference. You see the primary motivation of the hired hand, here’s a point. It’s self-preservation. While the primary motivation of Jesus is self, You see, Caleb did a really good job last week, and if you haven’t watched it, watch where, where he was talking about the Pharisees, these essential bad shepherds and, and, and what Jesus is doing here in this, in this, uh, John chapter 10 passage is he’s comparing the Pharisees to these robbers, to these hired hands, to these bad shepherds.

And he says, look, your primary motivation is just your self-righteousness and your. You’re just trying to self preserve, but my primary motivation is self-sacrifice. You see the, the shepherd knows his sheep, it says in this verse and is known by the sheep. Yeah. We live in a day and age where the higher you get, the less people actually may know about you.

You can climb that corporate ladder, you can do whatever the higher position you get. The, the natural in inclination is, oh, I can’t be around those other people. Not in my high status. One of the things I love most about Trey is that he, and, and we were talking last night, he goes, oh my, like my church community would know if I’m up here preaching something and I’m off and I’m living something else.

That’s actually a really good thing. Yeah. I would actually be nervous if you didn’t interact with him and he was just up here to entertain you, but not lead you to an encounter with. And so what Jesus models is that not only do the sheep know me, but they are known by him. Jesus cares about unity. We see that in verse 16.

I gotta bring sheep from out outside the pen. I gotta bring these other sheep because there’s gonna be one flock and one sheep. You see, he knew that. And what he was trying to make the point was, and he and he did this often was I didn’t come just for the. I also came for the Gentiles. Right. And in a day and age where we have a lot of these cultural, uh, pundits and leaders who wanna create division and dehumanize people, they would rather you pick your tribe.

Right? They don’t care about unity. Yeah. Right. As long as you, as long as it leads to greater compensation for them, you vote for them, you buy that thing, you follow that, you subscribe to that. But their main goal is not unity. You see, Jesus understood that his main goal was unity. He was more concerned with preserving the father’s plan over the preservation of his power.

His main concern was the father’s plan. He says, no one takes it from me. When he is talking about laying down his life, I lay it down on my. Meaning I run this, no one does this. That’s right. You don’t tell me when to lay it down. You don’t tell me when to bring it up. I’m the one who does this and I this.

This is what makes Jesus so different. This is what makes him different than any other priest in this moment, rabbi Shepherd is that he willingly lay down his life willingly. We create, I think we have this chart. Um, and this chart, what I, I’m not gonna go over each one mainly cuz I can’t see it right now.

But you can look at it and you can see the different breakdown of the chart. You can see the difference between a good shepherd and you can see the difference between a bad shepherd. And it’s fascinating because we can look at this chart and there’s probably one that really resonates with us because we’ve experienced bad shepherding in our.

Maybe that was a bad parent. Uh, who, who, or maybe it’s, I don’t wanna say a bad parent. Maybe a parent that just didn’t know any better. Sure. Or maybe you did have a bad parent and you were shepherded in such a way where you were neglected, you were abandoned. Yeah. Maybe you have a bad boss, or you’re in a, you were in a bad relationship once where you were just left out to dry.

There was no caring for your needs. They were very selfish, self-absorbed. That is not Jesus. That is not our good shepherd. But the, here’s the thing, and, and, and, and let’s take an honest moment here, is we can look at this list, we can see these two texts next to each other and say, wow, Jesus really is a good shepherd.

But the problem is, As good as this news is, and as good as Jesus is a shepherd who loves us, cares for us, protects us and leads us from the beginning of time, you and I have chosen autonomy over apprenticeship to Jesus from Genesis three. They had everything. There was perfect shalom, peace with God, but they chose to be autonomous in that.

And what the enemy wants to do is que he’ll have you look at that entire list and say, is Jesus really a good shepherd? And you can have all the scriptural truth in front of you and still pursue autonomy from God, right? That is just our natural, selfish, sinful, bent in dna. It’s in us, and that’s why we need to be formed by Jesus.

That is a lifelong process. I loved, um, Victoria, Victoria’s, uh, testimony because it’s not about performance, it’s about a process. Formation is a process, and from the beginning of time, we have chosen autonomy. You don’t believe me. Isaiah 53 6. It says this verse. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

We all. I don’t know, in the Greek and the Hebrew all means, all that means every, all of us, right? We all have gone astray. We actually think that we’re better shepherds than Jesus. Now we wouldn’t outrightly say that cuz we’re actually smart. We’re like, no, we would never say that. But what I think is fascinating is, and I loved how ca, how Caleb called us into worship.

And as he was saying that, it just made me think that on this Palm Sunday, There were people waving these palm branches and they were shouting Hosanna. And we could shout, we can come here on Sunday and shout Hosanna, but then go back during the week and say, give us Barabbas. They traded Jesus for a robber, the very robber and hired hands that we’re talking about here.

Wow. So if we don’t understand the apprenticeship to Jesus, being foreign by Jesus is the most significant thing we can. We will just go throughout our week saying, give us Barabbas, preach. And we are just no different than those who saw him on Sunday. They were crucifying him later.

And so there’s been studies, and I think Covid, uh, kind of, uh, was a catalyst to this, where there’s been this major movement towards autonomous work, right? Remote work. Has anybody in here, like a remote worker, So we have quite a few people that understand remote work, and there’s all these studies now that are coming out that are saying, man, autonomy is tied to peak performance.

Right? It’s like you don’t have to be in the office anymore. There’s no real level of like, like you’re playing solitaire and then your boss walks by and then you’re back to, you know, working or there’s no real level of that, right? Like it’s, in many ways I think it’s been. But you see autonomy in the workplace is fine, but autonomy in your faith is so much different.

Jesus did not call us to live autonomously. The Christian life is not meant to be autonomous. It’s meant to live under the lordship of Jesus and together in community. Last week, Caleb talked about how the, the self-righteous, uh, Pharisees. Like the way in which they work and operate just wants you to, to try harder, work better.

They throw these, he’s in these WO statements. Jesus is calling them out saying, woe to you for you. Throw on these heavy extra burdens on people that weren’t meant to be there. But they didn’t necessarily live in the type of community that Jesus is calling his followers to live in. You see, knowledge has its ability to puff up.

Being autonomous means that you create a world for yourself where you’re just kind of the only one who believes what you believe in. Or if you’ve watched a social dilemma, everyone that follows you, uh, thinks like you, acts like you. And so you live in this autonomous bubble and way of thinking, and it’s deadly.

Because it is not the way of Jesus, and I think that we have to understand that apprenticeship to Jesus, actually, it doesn’t increase our production, but it increases our maturity. Apprenticeship to Jesus increases our maturity and love, and it’s more focused on who you become, not what you produce, or how much you.

Like your production is a byproduct of who you are in Jesus. It’s going to naturally flow. Yeah. And for us, I know it may seem like that’s not me, like I don’t live autonomously from God. Like I love him, I worship him. But all throughout our week, this whole idea of practicing these things is not a part of your DNA because you think I got enough on Sunday.

That’s good. And then when we go through, So much of our world is being discipled by cable news and, and Fox and CNN and this celebrity are these pundits. And you spend more time giving your attention to these things. And you wonder why that you struggle with anxiety or you struggle with, uh, anger or you struggle with pe like a lack of peace because you are being formed by the world and you have no idea, right?

You have no idea. Because you and your phone are, you live pretty autonomously together. And there’s a study that recently showed, it’s fascinating that I believe it was kids between the age of eight and 13 said that they have really good friends that they’ve never met. Cuz it’s all been online. You see this online world creates what we believe to be communal, but it’s very autonomous.

It, it’s different when you have to show up into a. And you have to look at each other in the face and say, I struggled to follow Jesus this week, or I was really basing my Sabbath off of performance and not the finished work of Jesus. Or, you know what? I was actually a really big jerk to my kids this week.

Like that stuff is harder. That is the hard way of following Jesus. But the good news is found in the gospel that while you and me have gone astray, Jesus would go on this rescue mission to find us. Yeah. You see, at the end of Ezekiel, he doesn’t leave us just with the bad news. He leads us with what he’s going to come and do.

You see, Jesus is a good shepherd because he actually practiced and did what he preached, right? He came to fulfill what he, he had said was gonna happen in Ezekiel. He came to rescue you and I from sin. He came to pay the ultimate sacrifice to lay down his life so that you and I could experience life to the full fullness with.

And he did all of this while we were still sinners. You know, I oftentimes, I grew up in church and I would hear about like the 99 and the one, right? Like we as Christians, like we gotta go find the one. There was a lot, and I’m not saying that’s bad. I actually think that makes sense. But I think when we realize and when we don’t sit in the reality that we were once, the one, if you follow Jesus, we were once the one like, we wanna get on this mission to go say the one.

But we gotta remember we were the. Scripture said we had gone astray, but it, if it wasn’t for the finished work and the rescue mission of Jesus, like we would not be able to call ourselves one of his children. So we need to remember that and I want to give us three shifts that we need to make as his sheep in order to follow the good Shepherd.

The first shift, and I, and I see this all throughout the DNA of this church, and I love this, it’s, we need a shift from. To silence. Noise. To silence. I don’t know if you know this, but sheep historically do not have good eyesight. Like they have this like weird, crazy eyesight where they can see to the peripherals and even see behind them.

Some of them say, I’m like, yo, I would love that. Like with four kids, I’m like, gimme some sheep like eyes. Cause I need to see. Yeah, but they can’t really see in front of them. So notice when, when Jesus says later on in John that the sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me. There’s that language, because the way in which, in that context that sheep would follow the shepherd is by their voice.

It’s by not, but not by sight. Right? Does that sound familiar? Right. By the voice and for us, that’s by faith. And so historically sheep are not great at being able to see, and neither are we. You know, Jesus, his rebuke against the Pharisees, right after he gave the blind man sight, the story that Caleb was talking about last week, right after he gave the blind man’s sight, and, and John, they, they were, they were going up to Jesus like, well, Jesus, like, can we.

Are we blind? Like he was talking about this spiritual blindness and the Jesus’ rebuke against the Pharisees was, oh, the reason y’all are messed up is cuz you think you can see. You think you can see, right? That was his issue. See, the danger about getting more information and knowledge is that you start thinking that you, your own shepherd, the Pharisees, that’s what they did.

They thought they can see and Jesus says, no, no, no, I didn’t come. I came for the. Right, and there’s this, we are, there is a Harvard study that said, we are the most over inform society and the most underperform society. And so this, this movement from noise to silence allows us to ask ourselves, is God’s voice the loudest voice that’s direct?

It is his voice, the the voice that’s shaping my life. It’s his voice, the one that’s directing my approach. The voice you listen to the most is the one shaping your approach. I put that rhyme in there. That was for Trey. That was for Trey. The voice you listened to most is the one shaping your approach.

What has your attention has you? What has your attention? Has you, we have to be people who are willing to like, to actually turn off the cell phone, actually turn off the tv, actually stop being friends with that crazy friend you got that you’re trying to minister to for like 18 years. And, and Jesus is saying, brush off your Nikes and keep walking.

Or you’re Sketchers or you’re saying those, whatever it is. Js Yes. Or your Js. Yes.

Last week, Kayla made this point about what we worship becomes our identity. And I just want to add onto that because I think what we give our attention to becomes what we worship and what we worship becomes our identity. So what you give your attention to eventually becomes what you worship. And so again, we don’t do this I think intentionally, but we do it unintentionally.

You wanna be, you wanna be a better husband or a better mom, and you got all these. Self-help gurus in your life, and you got that mo, you got your mommy blog that you read. I don’t even know if they blog anymore, but you got that channel that you follow and you, you’re trying so hard and you’re giving your attention to all these things except Jesus.

It is so hard, especially those of you that work in fields where you have to be online or you have to be on a computer, or if you have young kids, like it is so hard to turn down the noise. To get to silence and solitude and stillness. But it is worth it for your soul. It is absolutely worth it. We recently, uh, hung out with my sister-in-law and she’s a musician, and like I said, I have four kids and they are not quiet.

Okay. And they were so loud and when we got all the other little kids in the house, it is just chaotic. Right. It is like, it It is, it is wild. And. My, my sister-in-law, she plays a guitar and, uh, she had this little ukulele and my daughter has been like, like, tey, please teach me how to play tea. I’m like, great, like more noise in our house.

That’s exactly what we need. So find teacher. But I noticed my sister-in-law, like she’s playing and then I watch her step outside and I watch her step outside in the backyard. She closes the door and then she brings the guitar closer to her ear. And she’s doing what they call tuning the guitar. Yeah. But here’s the reality.

And I said, Tay, like, why did you do that? Like she says, well, there’s too much noise in here. I can’t hear how the guitar is being tuned, because she wants to play the right note. She wants it to sound like it’s supposed to sound, but she had to remove herself from the noise in order to hear it properly.

So for you and I, we have to get outside of the. We gotta tune our ear towards God’s heart and his word, so that we may live properly, that we may be his apprentices. And so the second shift I want us to, to understand is that we need to go from wanting things to what we actually need. Dallas Willard says that our failure to hear his voice when we want is due to the fact that we do not, in general want to hear it, that we only.

Only when we think we need it. It’s a very circumstantial, desiring and wanting God on the, I believe it was the Sabbath boxes out there. I wrote this down. I thought it was so great. It says, as you enter Sabbath, there’s a prayer that’s on that box. It says, God, we ask not what we want, but what you know that we need.

Amen. You see the difference of being shepherded by Jesus and the. Is that the world and Satan knows it, knows the algorithms of your desires. Yeah. And they will keep feeding those desires to you and they will keep feeding them to you. But oftentimes, Jesus knows what we need, not just what we want. Right?

Jesus is too good for us to get everything we want in life. You know? To be formed by Jesus actually means to suffer in the name of Jesus. There’s actually some, like you can’t have Christ without the cross, and to be formed by Jesus means that we actually need to allow God to give us the things that we need versus the things that we just want.

King David said in Psalm 23 that the Lord is my shepherd. I have what I need. Imagine how much would change in our. In our lives, in our workplaces, if we lived from just that very statement, the Lord is my shepherd. All those good things. A good shepherd is I have what I need. I have what I need because he is my shepherd.

I didn’t quite fully understand this much until we got commissioned to plant this church in January 30th, 2022. Um, We’re up on a stage and we knelt down and we had everyone from our church pray for us and they commissioned us out. And in that moment I thought, yes, God, this is this man. I, I’m sensing your call.

We’ve prayed and people have affirmed this. I’m gonna do what you’ve, what you want us to do. God. And I feel called to this. That next week, I would wake up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain because something had happened to my knee that, I don’t know, maybe I bent it funny. The doctor still don’t know.

I had the piece of a strawberry sized piece of cartilage floating around in my knee that needed to get removed. So it got removed in July and in July we, uh, the month before we just so happened to move into our city. Finally, we’re here. We’re excited to invest in our community, so we move. I get this surgery three week, three, three week recovery max.

Eight days after the surgery, it gets infected. I have to go immediately into sur an emergency surgery, 29 staples. Later, I get a PICC line in my arm that goes all the way to the top of my heart to administer antibiotics. I have to do this on the hour, every eight hours for six weeks straight. And I’m gonna be honest with you, that’s not what I.

Right. It’s not what I wanted. Mind you, while I’m in the hospital, during that emergency surgery, my wife calls me and says, Hey babe, really sorry someone backed into your car. So we have a claim out on our medical bill now we have a claim out on our car, and then I’m about to exit, uh uh, to be taken out from the hospital, about to go back home.

She calls me in the morning and says, babe, I’m so sorry, but like our bathroom is. And there’s weird stuff coming out the toilet, and I think we need to call somebody. We only have one bathroom in this house. They come, they have to redo the entire bathroom, which means we have to move out, which means we have to move into our in-laws house.

Some of you, that sounds really scary. Luckily for us, it wasn’t that bad, but I left the hospital with an insurance claim out on our. Medical Bills car. Meanwhile, my wife, my wife is 38 weeks pregnant now. We’re about to live in her parents’ house, which we were there for three and a half months. And the whole time I’m sitting here in, in many ways, if I’m being honest with you, I’m questioning why God is allowing this to happen.

I’m sitting here wondering like, did I do something like do I have unrepented sin? It Like, did someone put a curse on my life? I have no idea. I’m just sitting here wondering, God, it doesn’t feel like you’re the good shepherd, even though that’s what the word says. And what I slowly began to realize is that a lot of times I, maybe you can identify with this, I want God to renew my circumstances when he’s trying to renew me.

You see, that wasn’t, we didn’t go through. So our church would be successful. And look at what we suffered to have this church. No, we, I believe we went through that because God needed to shepherd us. He needed to shepherd me in who I was gonna become as a husband, who I was gonna become as a father, who I was gonna become as a pastor, to be able to truly empathize with people when things happened that are hard and don’t make sense.

But you’ve been able to trust God in the process because he knows that’s what you needed and not necessarily what you wanted is So I. And there’s things in your life where you need to just hear that, that God wants to give you what you need. My wife and I have never seen God more clearly in our entire life than the time where we suffered the most.

It doesn’t. It’s paradoxical. It’s the way of the kingdom, right? And in that Psalm 23, it says, even though I go through the darkest valley, I fear no. For you are with me, your rod and your staff. They comfort me. I just want you to see that line. It doesn’t say even when I am stopped and destroyed in the darkest valley, it says When I go through the darkest valley, God does not promise that we won’t go through something, but he promised us that he will shepherd us.

It says, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. And I think we need to sit in that reality that we have a good shepherd who knows what we need more than we even know it. So maybe that job that you hope that you got, that you didn’t get was actually what God needed to have happen for you. Maybe that, that, that disagreement or that argument that that made you feel a little bit humbled Maybe that’s exactly what God.

To happen for you. S God’s provision is, is not absent from pain. And so the last one, the last shift that I want us to, to make is, is going from autonomy to community, autonomy to community. You need community to remind you, to restore you and to point you to the voice of God. I love when it says, when two or more are gather.

There is the presence of God. There’s, there’s, when Jesus would send his disciples, he would send them often in pairs. There’s something about living in community that allows you to sift through, because the enemy wants to get to your identity. The enemy wants to lie. He wants to steal things from you that only God has placed in you, and you need a community to help.

Say, is this, is this of the. Right. I’m struggling with this. Can you, can you help me make sense of that? But when you are left to yourselves, a lot of times it’s insanity because all you’re talking to is you. But when you live in community, you get to be reminded of this good shepherd. And in many ways, when you apprentice under the Good Shepherd, you begin to then be able to, to help shepherd other people because you know where to guide.

I’ll leave you with a story that, you know, friends like Trey were really instrumental in our time of suffering. I don’t know any other way to put it. It was the hardest year of our life and just having friends who would call and, and remind and pray and encourage, like helped us move forward in our path today.

There was a lady that I was working with as. Kind of a church planting, um, project manager. She would make sure all my legal stuff was, was done. Her name was Moe. And Moe was this very vibrant woman, like just full of joy. Every time I hopped on a Zoom call with her, it was like the joy of the Lord was coming through the screen and we would meet regularly.

And she connected me with this guy named Pastor Todd, who used to pastor in the city that we’re pastoring and we’re planting, and I connected with him. Had a great convers. We set up a meeting to connect in a couple months. He just wanted to stay updated and I got an email saying that Mo had had a stroke, um, and half of her body was numb, um, and uh, paralyzed.

And I’m watching Facebook and there’s videos of Mo Moe. Half of her body is just paralyzed, but the other half is worshiping. She can’t talk, but she’s worshiping. And you see there’s worship. And I’m just like, so in this season of hardship, I’m just like, whatever Moe has, I need that. Well, Moe couldn’t talk and it was getting worse.

And so this pastor that she connected me, Todd, he goes to pray over her and pray over her body. And this was on Thur, this was on a Thursday. On a Wednesday we got, I had a friend text me and say, Jay, I just feel like the Lord. Bless you financially in a way that will help your family with all the financial struggles you’ve had to go through.

I’m like, I’m down with that prayer. Just pray that a couple more times. Yes. Amen. Hallelujah. Well, two hours later we get a call that’s saying our plumbing is actually worse. And so instead of $3,000, it’s gonna cost 10,000. And so I’m like, God, that’s the opposite. Um, can we fix this? What’s going. So I didn’t realize this, but I had a call scheduled with Pastor Todd that Friday, two days after we get this call about our, our bill, and I’m talking with Pastor Todd and I’m just, you know, asking him, how do you navigate hardship as a pastor?

How do you care for your family? Well, and then at the end I say, pastor Todd, like, do you have a word from God? I need something? Like, do is, is the Lord want you to share anything with me? And he says, yes, actually. Um, I, I have something from the. I met with Moe yesterday and we got to pray over her and, you know, she hadn’t been talking but three times.

Jay, she says, Jay Stoval. She has not spoken a word up until this point. He says she’s able to get out. Jay Stoval. Then in, in, in broken sentences, she starts to say, He had knee surgery, his bathroom flooded. She knew all of this, and she’s sharing it with this pastor. So he comes and meets with me, and he already has all this context because the Lord spoke through this half paralyzed woman and, and what, what Pastor Todd says, Jay, I just need you to know that, that Jesus cares for you and he wants to let you know through Moe in the most unconventional way, in a way that I never would’ve thought it would come from her.

It came from her. And so at 9 38 on Friday night, I get a message from Pastor Todd that says, Jay, I feel so compelled by Moe and just everything that has happened that our church is gonna pay the $10,000 bill for all of your plumbing and expenses. You don’t think that my wife and I weeped and thought, Shirley, you are a good shepherd.

But, but the Lord had to use Moe to remind us that he was. And I believe that in this community, God is going to want to use some of you to remind people that he’s a good shepherd, or some of you in this room need to be reminded of that today. And so I just want to invite you out as we worship and as we do, if you wanna come up and pray, they have these kneeling mats you can pray.

If there’s things that whe whether it’s, there’s things that you need to be healed of, prayed over, whatever the case may be. I know that Caleb and Trey and the leadership, they want to be here for you because they are really good.

And my prayer is that you would pick up a Sabbath box, that you would pursue silence, that you would limit the noise, that you would continue in this practice of being formed by the Sabbath. And lastly, maybe it’s just stepping forward and and enjoying communion with your good shepherd. And maybe you just need to tell the Lord like, thank you for caring for me.

Thank you for not abandoning. Or maybe you feel like he has. The church is not a place for you to pretend. It’s a place for you to just bring your person. We, they don’t want your persona, they want your person. And so maybe you just need to get before the Lord and say, it feels like you have abandoned me.

There’s a whole book called Lamentation. There’s a whole bunch of psalms where at the end of the psalm, it doesn’t end with joy. It just ends with crying out. So let’s do that.